It seems like everyone wants to get an HP TouchPad for $99 for the 16GB model and $149.99 for 32GB. In fact , HP employees will be getting first dibs to buy HP TouchPads when they come in stock on September 28 in the HP company webstore.
HP employees received an email from Stephen De Witt, vice president and general manager of HP webOS Global Business Unit. TouchPad tablets will be available on a first-come basis and limited to only one per employee via the HP company webstore. Employess will receive an email with a link, two days before they go one sale.
HP will reportedly manufactured 100,000 to 200,000 new TouchPads, expected to arrive in October. In 2009 HP had over 300,000 employees, you can do the numbers.
The HP TouchPad sale has created a breeding ground for scammers to get you to sign up for forums and give out credit card information. Analysts at Canalys reported that HP should bring it back to garner market share.
Last week, QVC watchers had the chance to buy TouchPad bundles.
Today, just five hours after publishing our top articles of the week, content stealers, scraped our information and achieved higher Google rankings for the term HP TouchPad.
Yesterdays sale of the remaining stock of HP Touchpads to employees only probably cost HP 10's of millions of dollars in lost productivity. As you know an email went out a few weeks ago to all HP employees and retirees letting them know that they will have an exclusive opportunity to buy the last of the TouchPads for $99 or $149.
The sale would start at 8AM PST on the epp (employees)online storefront, 1 only per address and first come first severed until they were all gone. For a company that is betting it's reputation and future on serving and servicing Enterprise companies you would think someone would have made sure the storefront servers could handle the demand. Nope, the servers were overloaded and rejecting customers 15 minutes after 8AM, you would get an "we are experiencing a greater than normal demand, try back later screen. Also everyone at most HP locations along with those at home including retirees and spouses were all trying to log in and get the 1 only Touchpad. So most workers and everyone else would hit the tablets button and get the hourglass of death for 5 to 8 minutes before you got to the "try back later screen" and your PC was locked up during that 5 to 8 minutes. That was happening in just about ever cubical in all the HP locations. Every 20 or 30 minutes word would spread that someone in your group or floor got one ordered, but I don't know of more than 4 folks that got one at our location, 3,000 HP employees. This craziness went on from 8AM until 3PM when word spread that all he touchpads were sold. Most thought it was a lie just to get everyone back to work, so we all keep trying to buy one. What a cluster (you know what), this board and much of the new management added the last 18 months are as dumb as a bag of rocks. Thank God my retirement is in a 401K not our old retirement program ended in the 80's, and just 1 more year and I can pull the pin and leave HP. Really sad though this was once the best company to work for in the entire world, now it's almost embarrassing to say you have been with HP over 30 years.